Sebastian Matthews: A Poem on the 50th Day of Barack Obama's Presidency

(Asheville WordFest organizers Laura Hope-Gill and Sebastian Matthews are bringing together poets from a variety of traditions. Photo by Anne Fitten Glenn. More about Wordfest 2009 will appear on this blog next month.)


Sebastian Matthews read this poem at the Inauguration Day celebration at UNC-A on the evening of January 20. After a glut of Inauguration Day poems filling cyberspace, I decided to wait to post this one on the 50th day of Obama's presidency.


In a Time Before Cell Phones


In a time before cell phones we hiked
to mountaintops unadorned with cell towers

and never once thought to check our emails
or text a friend “What a view!”

We moved along city streets freely, arms loose
at our sides, fingers splayed, gazing out

at the newly powerwashed world in wonder
not gliding on the mind’s traveling sidewalk

or leaving desperate messages to old friends
in faraway places. In a time before cell phones,

grips free, we’d loft avocados and grapefruit
stallside and pet old cats as they yawned in Spanish

on the democratic stoop, and meet by coincidence,
embracing and kissing in the tired dust of public garages

while reciting random Whitman, or at cafes
with long bars dimpled with invisible grief

as Piaf or Hank Williams croon out of radios.
In a time before cell phones we had to shout out

or turn to a stranger for the time, or simply
remain rooted in our spots as the singing moment

ran its fierce course over our stippled skin.
We could only call for help and those cries, often,

were left unheard. In the time before cell phones
we were identified by our broadcasting voices’

maladjusted gait and secret handshakes changing daily,
no t-shirts to announce our affinities.

When we crashed our automobiles we waited
for roadside assistance and lost our way stepping off

the curb, and fell into reversible comas
while waiting out ringtones. At public performances

and in the classroom or waiting in line for food,
we slept soundly in the dead spaces—in the dark

of day, leaning against each other for warmth
or affection and woke to the teacher’s voice,

inconvenient lover’s, light spattering window screens
or someone saying “Next in line, please”

and we knew that meant us. In the time before
a time before cell phones, films were shown in large halls

with hatted men and bejeweled women smoking in the dark,
alone together, and the movie came to us in a cone

of light laced in dust. We came in whenever we wanted,
sure we’d get around to the next scene of our lives,

and departed hopeful that whoever just called
in our empty room of memory would surely call back.

---Sebastian Matthews